Baikalsk

Baikal’sk

a city in Sliudianka Raion, Irkutsk Oblast, RSFSR. It is situated on the south shore of Lake Baikal and has a station on the Irkutsk-Ulan-Ude railroad line. Population in 1968, 17,000. The settlement of Baikal’sk arose in 1961 in connection with the construction of a cellulose plant; it became a city in 1966.

Most of the lake and the basin's environmental problems are related to the use of these resources, especially the factories in Baikalsk and Selenginsk and the destructive forestry activities on the slopes of the surrounding mountains.

However, the pollution caused by the paper pulp factory at Baikalsk has seriously affected the southern sector of the reserve.

The northern half of Baikal isn't polluted by the level of industrial and human wastes that flows into it from the Selenga River in the southeast and the towns of Baikalsk and Slyudyanka farther south.

An enormous cellulose plant at the southern toe of the lake at Baikalsk spits endless gobs of particulates and chemicals into the atmosphere, adding to the emissions flowing down the airstream from the industrial cities of the Irkutsk Oblast to the west.

The outline of mountains became visible to either side, and we eventually discerned the smokestacks of the Baikalsk Kombinat, the industrial colossus that sits astride the south shore.

The quiet surface reflected, fugue-like, the distant silhouettes of the mountains until we passed under the hovering plume of steam and brown smoke and hove to in the Baikalsk harbor.

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